


Before Saint-Rémy

by gayfics



Category: Van Gogh - Fandom
Genre: #nice, TW: Self Harm, i just love vincent and want to write about him more, it mentions some more creative means of self harm, its about sadness, that vincent really did try at the asylum, this is a super short vignette, this was part of an english project, tw: suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 18:43:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9250751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayfics/pseuds/gayfics
Summary: Vincent contemplates his last few days in Arles in the wake of Gauguin's departure. Why is he always so sad?





	

Perhaps the acceptance of sadness is the worst thing in the world. No man deserves such an unrelenting force, that dreadful creature sitting on his shoulders and worming into his head; no man deserves the constant reminder of what he cannot have, and above all else he does not deserve to be subject to it to the point of the blind acceptance of it as the base of all reality.

The entire house he now stands in is a fleeting memory, every room a reminder of what he has lost. The room with the sunflowers and the open shutters is empty and by his own admission he hasn’t had the will to right the bedclothes. The bloodsoaked pillowcase he has long since thrown out. It has been four long months: the grass is growing green again, the sun feeds the blossoming flowers, but as far as he is concerned the house is cold as a morgue.

He walks towards the open window, past the bleached sunflowers, past the empty bed, past the hastily emptied dresser, past the forgotten fencing masks on the top shelf, towards the spring air. He would have to send him the masks soon.

To be so full of love to have it only buy you sorrows, it is a terrible way to live.

Soon, the painter will become the painting, he will down his pigment and swill his turpentine and it will not kill him even though by all means it should. The action will be proof that he will carry that blind acceptance with him and there is no rhyme or reason to it, there never is; it is not true that happiness cannot exist without sadness, nobody ever needs that feeling of their body being full of lead and and a throat full of cornstarch or a throat swollen with paint thinner. It is what will kill him, that acceptance, and it will not be beautiful, it will not be tragically beautiful, it will not be beautifully tragic, it will horrible and dark like cold metal and cold hands and dry skin and spiders and the letter n.

He had known happiness, sure. But the creature had found him on a long walk in the rain and will stay there in the back of his head until his heart stops beating, when it will undoubtedly move onto another and another and another, whispering the same nothings until every clock stops ticking. It is not fair.

He closes the shutters.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for school last week and I think it's all right? I adore Vincent, his words, his work, the love in his heart, and everything he did with such a fervent passion that I'm sure I'll never do him justice but try just the same. While at the asylum in Saint-Rémy many believe he ate yellow paint; that's close but it's not true. He wanted to kill/hurt himself by consuming paint, so they watched him very closely while he worked. Eventually he managed to drink some of his turpentine (which he was using as paint thinner) and suffered an irritated and swollen throat for weeks, in which he found it very difficult to eat.


End file.
